


Cecil's Not in Night Vale Anymore

by orphan_account



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Cecil is transported to the normal world, Cecil's weird as fuck ok, Cecilos doesn't happen until later, Gen, M/M, Teenage Cecil, also cecilos is probably just going to be handholding and awkwardness I suppose, also tattooed Cecil, and fine as hell bod, but I'm pretty sure there's going to be a shower scene later, but teen Cecil most of all, eeeh high school won't come in until later chapters, i don't even know i'm sorry, i don't know yet, oh no, otherwise it's just like a little too unrealistic?, probably not any sex or anything sorry, so cute, uuuh, where carlos finds out about Cecil's pseudo-tentacles and also moving tats
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically, a teenaged Cecil, during his mysterious internship at Night Vale Community Radio, goes missing, as all interns somehow do. </p><p>However, he's not transported to some weird fourth dimension or dark void or anything. He's just... transported to a regular town... in Arizona. Like.... that's it.</p><p>So I guess this is just my excuse to have Cecil, still weird as hell, in a regular, actually normal high school. (Which also has a small science club. With a hot, nerdy-as-hell captain (who's also a senior))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ((uuuUUUUUH 
> 
> So I just finished "Cassette" and I was like "wow teenCecil sounds really fucking cute I bet he's dorky as hell" cos he sounds so excited about life and just hhnn Aaand I really like high school AUs for whatever reason. (But sob I like middle aged men being cute and domestic and living together and aaah)))
> 
> IN THIS CHAPTER  
> Cecil is taken away from Night Vale and finds a new home in a normal town. That's it. Literally. It's really short, too; sorry about that.

**_Prologue?_ **

****

_“It’s been a very sad day today, citizens,” Leonard Burton says woefully into the microphone. “Our newest intern, young Cecil Palmer, has not yet came back from the break room, after going in there to look into the mysterious black gas coming from the coffee machine. He is, sadly, presumed dead, citizens. To his family, the workers here at Night Vale Community Radio send their deepest condolences. He was a good kid.”_

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

 “Uh…”

 Cecil groaned, his head pulsating in pain as he sat upright. The flickering he had seen in his peripheral vision had gotten worse and worse still. When he had gone into the break room, the gas had surrounded him completely, and he had seen the flickering for just a moment before something heavy with a strange transparent feel tackled him.

 And that’s how he got here. As his eyes focused, he looked around. He was in a dark room; what seemed to be a storage room, actually. There were brooms and mops and various chemicals used for cleaning. (But not hydrogen cyanide (which, it is known, all Night Vale residents are immune to) and melted uranium; Cecil didn’t know why those weren’t anywhere to be found.)

 Staying on the floor (his head was hurting too much; he didn’t think he’d be able to handle standing), Cecil reached out to various items. He saw a short trashcan, and a torn book inside of it. He grabbed it and flipped it open, soon finding it was a class yearbook.

  _Class of 1976, Sophomores; Adams Park, Lanceton, AZ_ … Cecil hummed a short, pleased note at his finding, and flipped through the photographs. His curiosity was soon peaked, as he realized all of the students seemed… well, they seemed _normal,_ even though he and them seemed to share ages. Unlike the children at his school-- including Cecil himself-- they didn’t have any ‘abnormalities’ about them. Cecil only had two abnormalities (pseudo-tentacles with a strange purple and white, pulsing color and frequently moving and changing tattoos, which never stayed the same color for longer than a month). However, he knew many classmates with more than two eyes, sharp teeth, wings, two heads, animal parts, and holes in their bodies that emanated squawking sounds. Though, not always all of those at once.

 But these students, Cecil noted, had no third or fourth or seventh eyes on their foreheads or cheekbones, no baby-bird feathers lining their jaw and hairline, no  strange and colorful auras radiating from behind, and not even a single student’s face made the camera go blurry and distorted. A few had tattoos, but Cecil doubted they moved or changed color.

  _Well, it looks like I’ll be stuck here, in… Lanceton. Strange place, though, but I guess I gotta live with it for now. Just until I can find Night Vale again. Then, I guess I should blend in? I think these people are used to some pretty weird stuff. I don’t even think they’ve ever seen a dragon or a moving tattoo if I'm being honest with myself_ , Cecil thought. He looked at his tattoos, and waited until they looked cool before simply asking them to stop moving. It took a while and a few slaps to his right forearm, but they eventually laid as still a they could manage. His pseudo-tentacles-- which came out of a very thin slit down his spine-- were controlled by Cecil himself, so he didn’t really see a problem there. Just as long as nobody scared his pants off or made him angry.

 “Now,” he said out loud, standing up. He swayed a little when his head pulsed, but he was quick to steady himself. “Let’s go see where I am.”

 ...The fact that Cecil had absolutely no cautionary feelings regarding being in a strange, new place with no explanation given to him is completely out of understanding, but yet somehow perfectly understandable. Which that in itself isn’t easy to understand, though it seems perfectly clear to understand. Wow, that all sounded pretty weird. But you get what I’m saying, right?

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil gets a job! (At a bookstore though: he better watch out in case librarians are around..!)
> 
> And also has the most embarrassing moment of his life at a soup kitchen. A soup kitchen! (There's just something about that caramel-voiced, honey-skinned, perfect-haired server that... that.... Aaah~)
> 
> (( I am so fucking sorry   
> at least it's longer this time! ouo"" ))

When Cecil opened the door of the storage room, he found himself in a kitchen. Nobody was around, so he was able to sneak out a back door. He wandered around a bit, looking into shops and at people and stopped to stare at a dog (that stared at Cecil first). He past a small school, a coffee shop, an art gallery, three clothing stores, two restaurants, and a small pub (the building he woke up in was an abandoned pizza parlor). The buildings were aligned in an old fashioned way; lined up on the street with many buildings together, and short alleyways here and there. It reminded Cecil of old Night Vale, before it burned to the ground only to sprout up all new again the next morning, so he kind of liked it.

Realizing he had no money, Cecil stopped by a dog park. The City Council was talking about opening one up in Night Vale, but complications were making that difficult. Something about it starting to get infested with some weird characters. He hadn’t really heard enough of the conversation to know much about it, though.

Cecil sat around for a while, the sky growing darker by the hour. He started to wonder where he would sleep. He assumed outside, here on the bench, was safe, but he wasn’t sure exactly how different Night Vale was to this place. He didn’t know if strange creatures would suddenly come out of the trees, or if helicopters would send someone down to snatch him up. He was still considered a child, after all. Everyone knows children shouldn't be out after dark.

After long consideration, Cecil decided he might as well try to find an inside place. He could probably just go back to that pizza parlor. Surely nothing bad happens in abandoned pizza parlors. Except for random, invisible and intangible explosions coming from door handles. Or screams sounding from the depths of the floors. Or strange green orbs of light hovering three feet above the floor, bursting everytime someone got within a foot of touching one. Or baby dragons emerging from cracks in the wall where the stoves and ovens used to be. Yeah… nothing like that ever happens. Cecil will be fine.

~~

The next morning, Cecil awoke to the growling of his stomach. He frowned and stared at his belly, poking it a few times to see if it’d stop. When his stomach would not stop assaulting his ears with its horrid begging, he decided he would try to find some money and get some food. He didn’t know how, though. Maybe he could try singing… (No, probably not. Every time he sang a song, nobody remembered what he sang after it was over. They couldn’t even recall if he had even started singing at all. It made him very mad… he thought he had a pretty singing voice, too.)

Wandering around the town again, he ran into a young woman who stood in front of a shop with a sign reading “Soup Kitchen”. Cecil had passed her a few times, and she seemed to have noticed.

“Excuse me, sir, are you looking for something?” she asked politely, smiling at him kindly.

“Uuuh, yeah. Is there a good place to make fast money around here?”

The woman blushed a little, but Cecil didn’t notice. “Uhm… n-no, not that I’d recommend. B-but, if you’re hungry, we’re serving food inside. And if you stay around a little bit after serving hours, I’m sure someone could help you find a job.”

Cecil beamed, his spirits lifted. How wonderful! he thought. “That’d be splendid! Do I just walk on in, then?”

After the woman nodded, he walked in and eventually found the dining room. He strayed towards the end of the line, awkwardly standing and trying to copy what other people were doing. It seemed they just went up to the long tables, took a plate, chose what they wanted to eat, and went to sit down. Cecil thought it was simple and easy enough.

“You new here?” a voice asked as Cecil reached the table. Cecil looked up, his hand pausing in reaching for a plate.

“...........” Cecil’s jaw was slightly slack, his eyes locked onto the server boy who spoke to him.

 _Holy mother of mountains, he’s cute… and what perfect hair! Oh dear lord, he’s gorgeous_ , passed through his mind. When he heard a giggle beside him and saw dark red shoot across the boy’s cheeks, Cecil’s own face lit up in a blush.

 _I said that out loud!_ he mentally screamed, covering his mouth with his hand. He stared wide-eyed at the other teen, both of their faces red hot, both of them just standing there until a man behind Cecil nudged him forward.

“O-oh, sorry!” Cecil stammered to the man, hurriedly grabbing a plate and catching up to the rest of the line. He heard the caramel voice say something else, probably to the woman next to him, and he felt horrible. _How embarrassing!_ He can’t believe he said that out loud.

He quickly walked away from tables and away from the ridiculously cute server, way to the very back where eye contact with him was next to impossible. Cecil would swear he’d never been so embarrassed in his entire life. Not even when Steve Carlsburg _(ugh)_ spilled his lunch on his lap! And it was gooey squid that day, too. White ooze had left stains _all. Over_. Cecil had to go home, and that _still_ wasn’t as bad as this was! Oh, why was he so stupid?

Frowning, Cecil picked at his food with the plastic fork he was given. He didn’t recognize whatever it was, but it looked like meat. Not soft, raw meat, though, like back home. It looked… warm. And _cooked_. Cecil had thought cooking meat was a myth his brother made up. He wasn’t sure if he should eat it. ...Should he?

His annoying digestive organs argued 'yes'. He hesitantly tried it, and didn’t really like it all that much. It was too salty and really chewy; but, edible. He managed to finish the plate, plus the sweet corn, mashed potatoes, and grapes it came with. He forgot to grab some milk, but there was no way he was going anywhere near the front again. He couldn’t even look up there without feeling like he was going to throw up.

Making his way outside and successfully avoiding the serving tables, Cecil tried to find a place to get a job by himself (no way was he risking seeing Server Boy by staying). He really didn’t _want_ to work, because he felt like it was sort of cheating on NVCR, but… he really needed money. Especially after… Nope. Nope. He can’t even think about it. _Nope_. Not gonna go there. After what? _He didn’t know_. He didn’t know. No clue. _Nope._ He didn’t know.

Cecil looked around for “Help Needed” signs, and found a couple options. Coffee shop? …No. Coffee wasn’t a good thing with him. Restaurant? …Maybe. He should probably learn how people act around here a little more. Bookstore? …Sounds good enough. A bookstore isn’t a library after all, so librarians won’t be a problem. Well, shouldn’t be a problem. (If librarians even exist here. Cecil wouldn’t be surprised if yet _another_ normal thing was dropped.)

Walking into the shop, Cecil managed to find where to get an interview. If you could even call it that; the old man running the shop simply looked Cecil over, muttered something in Spanish, asked him a few questions in English, and then just like that; Cecil was hired. The old man patted him down and made him change in the back workroom into a snug purple t-shirt and beige pants. Patting him down again, the old man popped the collar, unpopped the collar, and fussed over his appearance before calling someone up to show Cecil around.

 _Is starting the first day normal? Or is he just desperate? It seems she’s the only employee besides him…_ Cecil followed the older girl around, listening to her as she explained what they needed him to do.

“The books are pretty well organized here, and we’d like to keep it that way,” the girl, Iris, was saying. She had an accent, and Cecil briefly wondered if she was the old man’s daughter. She was pretty, though, and the old man was  _definitely_ not very pretty. He guessed their relationship didn't really matter, though.

“They’re just placed under the genre signs, and in alphabetical order. But no numbers or anything like that, so it should be easy. If you have any questions, you can just ask me, alright?”

Cecil nodded, bouncing a little on his feet. “Sounds good!” he chirped. “Do I just stay here the rest of the day?”

“You can. ...Do you have anywhere to stay?”

“I guess, yeah…” Cecil’s smile was tight, and Iris looked at him skeptically, as if asking him if he was sure. The tension stayed, and after a while he slumped his shoulders and sighed. “I’ve just been here for a night, but I stayed at that old pizza parlor. I don’t know what it was called, though.”

“The old Jenson place? Brave soul; nobody’s gone in there for years,” she laughed. “A lot of people think that place is haunted! Why’d you stay _there,_ of all places?”

Cecil simply shrugged and grinned lopsidedly. “It feels like home, I guess? I just liked it. B-but I’m not weird, I promise!” At least, in Night Vale he wasn’t weird.


End file.
